"I sat me down to watch upon a bank, with ivy canopied and interwove with flaunting honeysuckle."
– John Milton
11/29/16:
I've been noticing a lot of tiny, young snails on leaves of my plants recently. They seem impervious to my organic insect repellent sprays, and deterrent methods such as eggshells or coffee grounds on the soil. Ah well. I guess I'll apply copper tape to planter boxes of my apparently-tasty flowers and keep protecting my tender lettuces with netting, in addition to removing snails manually. It's said that the best time to "hunt" them is at night, when they're most active. But I tend to trip over the paving stones and hose when out in the dark, even with a good flashlight. So I'll just continue to pick them off my plants in daytime when I'm out doing general garden maintenance.
The California brown snail is edible, brought over from Europe for use as escargot, but the long process of cleansing, de-sliming and cooking them doesn't seem worthwhile to me. There are much tastier things to put butter and garlic on anyway.
As I inspect the yard after rainshowers, I've observed how the ivy really takes over at this time of year. We have English and Algerian ivy under the hedges, growing up the fences, and Cape Ivy (Delairea odorata), which is more likely to creep into my planter boxes and pots. It's easy enough to cut back; the stems break off easily. I try to keep it from choking out my flowers and herbs, while appreciating the timeless cottage-garden charm that a modest cascade of ivy vines can have.
Clicking on the small images below will bring up a larger version.
Flowering ivy & sweetpea bush.
Cute little pests.
Spider plant progress.
The garden is persistently verdant and lush from recent drenchings, with a decent array of plants still flowering, but I crave more greenery indoors. I'd love to have larger sunny spots in the house. Our windowsills are frequented by cats (Julius enjoys knocking things over), and all these spaces are narrow except for the bedroom windowbox. That location is already crowded with the terrarium and lots of other stuff, from model sailboats to candles to stuffed animals. So I've been looking through Pinterest and other idea resources with a renewed focus on plant stands and low-light houseplant options.
The spider plant is now both flowering and producing a baby plant. I vaguely remember these proliferating at the sun-filled house I lived in while a child in Nevada, so I'm guessing it's mainly the increased light from moving this one nearer the skylight, perhaps combined with manure tea fertilizer, which is finally giving me a spider plant that looks as happy as those I lived among long ago.
